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*Donie Garrihy. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
Questions will need to be asked of management before players to explain St Breckans’ below-par semi-final display, manager of the North Clare side, Donie Garrihy maintained.
Having topped their group with victories over St Josephs Doora/Barefield, Kilmihil and Kilrush Shamrocks, St Breckans continued their strong run into the knockout stages where they eliminated St Josephs Miltown.
Their strong attacking threat and abundance of energy went missing when it came to the semi-final as they bowed out to Éire Óg on a margin of six points.
It has led to some introspection, manager Donie Garrihy acknowledged. “Not performing is very disappointing. We didn’t perform and I have to ask myself questions. I won’t be asking the players questions, I’ll be asking myself first and talk to the management team as to why we didn’t perform as maybe it’s not about the players”.
He continued, “So as a management team, we’ve to take time and reflect on this and find out what happened and why did it happen. I mean we’re not like this, we’re way better than this. Am I going to blame anyone now? Not until we find out what happened here”.
Some consolation is provided for Garrihy and St Breckans by the opportunity to claim silverware in the O’Gorman Cup. “With four minutes of additional time left, I still believed that we could win. It’s just a momentum shift, If you keep chipping away and get a goal, all of sudden you’ve everything to play for. It was never gone today until the final whistle but we’ve just got to pick up the pieces and go again. We’ve an O’Gorman Cup Semi-Final coming up so at least the year doesn’t finish like this.
“We believed that we had a lot of homework done on them but we just didn’t perform. We didn’t run at them and maybe we made it a big easy for Éire Óg today. But fair play to Éire Óg, they’re well able to win and I would like to think that Éire Óg respect us for being good losers. I hope they don’t let us down in the final and that they perform to their best in the final and that it’s a great final”.
